From neoevolutionism to world systems analysis

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The book investigates how theories of social change may contribute to the explanation of underdevelopment. The approaches to underdevelopment elaborated in Romania between 1860 and 1945 and foreshadowing key elements of present-day neoevolutionism, world-systems analysis, and postcolonial theories are used as a case study. Very much as in the case of "classical" colonial societies, Romania's status as an underdeveloped, "pathological" region at the beginning of the 19th century had triggered a fruitful debate of modernity's contradictions as well as its universal recipe for modernization